La Playa de Tansupa

So this weekend we decided that we didn't want to spend our time sitting at home again so we asked the professors if we could organize our own trip to the beach. They reluctantly agreed but that´s all we needed. Never have i seen a group of students our age organize themselves and get a project going so quickly. We immediately set a date and collected money and within two days we had reserved a school bus and had all the money we need to pay the driver and reserve hotels on the coast. We reserved the bus for the 16 students to leave at midnight for apparently this was the best time to leave the city (least amount of traffic). We all arrived at the pre-organized meeting spot but not to find the bus we expected. Instead we found a buseta or a little bus that really only sits twelve plus the driver. Without any alternative we all decided to climb into the bus and get on the way. It was rediculously tight and not anybody could really sleep. Two people fell asleep on both of my shoulders and this prevented me from moving to get any sort of comfortable postion. The drive is six hours long so after a while we all just ended up sleeping on each other in a mosh posh of sleepy students. We finally arrived there at about six in the morning and found a pretty little hotel with a pool and a little garden to kick the soccer ball around. We took some quick naps and walked the four blocks from the hotel to the beach. It is definately different than Laguna. We walked down a dirt road in between some colorful buildings all the while being watched intently by the ¨beach folk¨. They say in Ecuador that the beach people are all lazy and dont get anything done. I see now why they say that. People just chill on side of the road or on the sidewalk and watch the passer-byes. The beach is filled with people selling stuff and by the time i got there, half of the students had already bought coconuts to drink the milk out of and a man with a guitar was singing local beach songs to some of the girls. We bought some chairs under a tent for a dollar each and we all jumped into the water, which was green and kinda gross. Ha, but it wasnt too cold and it was refreshing to get out of the rediculoulsy powerful sun. Being on the equator, the sun was directly overhead and decievingly strong. I didnt think i was getting burned but when i got back to the hotel i was like a lobster. We played soccer on the beach and threw the frisbee for a while. The waves were pretty small and it wasnt really possible to ride them with the exception of a few sets everynow and then. After five or six hours at the beach and lunch at a beach side seafood place we went back to the hotel to swim in the pool. We were pretty much the only guests there so the owner of the place turned up the salsa music and started serving us drinks. We danced / drank until nightime fell upon us and we all showered to go to Atacambes a bigger city with clubs all along the beach. We got there and continued doing what we had been doing at the pool for a few hours intermitten with beach strolling. After a few hours we finally got over it decided to go back to the hotel. We got there and i rested in a hammock for a while enjoying the warm night and fresh air until finally i crashed in my bed. The next morning we woke up and went to the beach again to enjoy much of the same as we had the previous day. We left around three and were therefore able to see what we had earlier missed due to the darkness. The drive up nearly ten thousand feet showed us a variety of ecosystems all just as pretty as the next. From tropical beachside scrubs to banana plantations to forrests of deciduous trees to the huge and dirty building of the city. I had the best night of sleep i´d had the whole time ive been in Quito that night. Now i had classes today in which we discussed Ecuadorian authors and direct and indirect pronouns. Tomorrow we leave for Mindo, a tropical forrest reserve about three hours from here. Love you all very much and miss you a ton. I wish you all could have been with me to enjoy the beach and ambiance.

Love always JCB